Glenn Beck Has a Problem With Christians?

I probably should leave this alone, but being a former End-Times Pentecostal it just fascinates me. Glenn Beck now has problems with President Obama’s theology.

It makes me wish we could just judge our politicians on their politicking, but we’re in the era of blurred boundaries and public piety for fun and profit.

Anyway, Glenn Beck has just dissed the United Church of Christ, of which Barack Obama is a member. The UCC is a liberal Christian church, practicing social justice on a foundation of Protestant Christian beliefs.

Theologically speaking, I don’t have a dog in this fight, so I’m inclined to give the whole issue a Taoist ‘it’s all good’.

Religion should not even be an issue– to sink further into prejudice and demonizing the opposition using actual demons takes us back to the Middle Ages, or maybe to the Seventeenth Century when Puritans hanged Mary Dyer on Boston Common for unrepentant Quakerism.

But I have to point out a double standard here. Anyone who fails to follow the True Political Party is judged un-christian despite all evidence to the contrary, while the differences between LDS and Christianity are swept under the rug when there’s profit to be made. Who or what is the object of worship?

RAY O’ HOPE: Senator Orrin Hatch, himself a Mormon, comes out in defense of the proposed Islamic Community Center in New York City on the grounds of freedom of religion and private property rights. Well said.

WORSHIPPING MAMMON: That’s the fighting words used by some conservative Evangelical clergymen on seeing the flock singing along to Glenn Beck’s hymnbook. They suspect Mormon influences. Washington Monthly has the quotes.

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10 thoughts on “Glenn Beck Has a Problem With Christians?”

I think the intrusion of sectarianism into the public political discourse may be attributable in large part to the insanely aggressive attacks on public mention of a Creator by the ACLU and like minded atheists,etc who seem to make a profession of being “offended”.
It’s a reaction to being backed into a corner.
It used to be a politician would make a reference to God in a general sense and that was it.Of course there were some sectarian politicians,but they didn’t run the show by any means.
Now,the reaction has come back hard.
I hope the people who crusaded against any acknowledgement of a higher power by a public official or institution are happy with the results.

I think I’m correct-they took a pretty benign situation and made it a frontline conflict,and they tended to get their way.
Well,eventually the people they were marginalizing decided to push back and now we have this melange of politics and religion,which I don’t think is constructive.
I know they defended the scum from the Westboro Church.And the American Nazi Party,asmall,noisy group of malcontents.The ACLU knows those are high profile cases and the people(?)they’re defending have virtually no following.
They generally shy away from defending mainstream conservative positions or opposing political correctness when it is used to discourage free speech.

I think he started off very cyincally, carefully calculating how to spark the most outrage, which leads to the most ratings, which leads to the most money, etc.

However, after a steady diet of a very vocal minority of the public actually believing him, I think it has started going to his head. He says something ridiculous, his following grows. After a while, his perspective has become warped, and I think he’s started/starting to believe his own claptrap.

IMHO.

No, observer, the ACLU didn’t start this. It started when a large enough segment of the population was no longer christian, or sufficiently christian that they decided that they didn’t like having a state-sponsored religion. So they objected.

They were told to sit down and shut up. How dare they ask for their rights? Rights are only for the White Christian Majority.

That’s when the ACLU got involved.

And remember, the ACLU is the same group that defended the neo-Nazis’ right to protest in Skokie, IL. This is not a liberal group.

I love how Wrong-Wingers believe so adamantly in the Constitution, unless someone has the gall to say something the Wrong-Wingers don’t like. Then, the non-white, non-christian minority has no rights.

I grew up with such things that seem to outrage you like school prayer,My Country Tis of Thee,God Bless America,etc.None of it was sectarian.
The ACLU defended the Nazis in Skokie precisely to put on a show about how evenhanded they are.Tthe Nazi party literally didn’t fill an elevator in the Federal building.They consistently opposed defending individual rights under the 2nd amendment.That’s ok,huh?
I love the way you rail against the White Christian majority.I believe you’re one of them trying to sound like some kind of oppressed third worlder.
The ACLU has consistently defended the “rights”of pedophiles and child porn addicts.It’s just a little ironic that a few of their leadership people in Virginia and NY are in prison for jsut those types of violations.
The ACLU has a long history of trying to destroy anything traditional and of trying to destroy American sovereignty-all in accord with the internationalist aspirations of their founder,Roger Baldwin.
Many people who join the ACLU have no clue what dupes they are.

One more thing Klaus-this November I hope you and your cohorts get the message that this President and Congress have had their day.
Remember the old saying(clean version)”Screw me once,shame on you-screw me twice,shame on me”.

The first time around was in 1928. The policies currently advocated by the wrong-wing were the conventional wisdom, taken as articles of faith, not to be questioned.

The result was so horrible that, for two generations, no one even considered suggesting we return to them. Had they done so, Dems and Reps alike would have howled the suggestion of ‘supply-side’ econonmics, or ‘efficient market theory’ into oblivion.

But as the people who had lived through the Depression and WWII started dying in large numbers, the same ideas that put us in that situation started crawling out of the dung heap where they’d been discarded. Economists in Chicago created vast mathematical models that proved exactly nothing. But they sure were elegant.

So the result of Reaganonomics (Voodoo Economics, per GHW Bush) has once again become accepted wisdom.

And you, me, and everyone else is getting screwed. And screwed royally.

When the GOP comes after your SS benefits, and your Medicare–which Paul Ryan is proposing so this ain’t no strawman–don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Honestly, Observer, your barely-concealed glee in the hopes that our country goes down into another version of the Great Depression is revolting. You have really crossed a line.

When push came to shove in 2008, Bush and Paulson and the GOP all realized that their little lies about the economy were dead wrong. As a result, they intervened–as Keynes said the gov’t must–and we dodged a bullet and didn’t have Great Depression II.

Now, the GOP is disavowing their actions, screaming for more deregulation, and more money for the rich.

I am deeply afraid we won’t be so lucky the next time. And when unemployment hits 25%…it will be due to the dupes who fell for the Republican lies, all spread courtesy of Beck, Rush, and Palin, and parroted by Boehner, McConnell Angle, Buck, Pawlenty, Bachmann, and the rest of their minions.

What a colossal jerk you are.I want a depression? I’m “gleeful”?Please tell me who’s unemployed in your family,boy?
I won’t be bothered to explain myself to someone like youbut you have no idea how this economic situation has affected members of my family.
I “crossed a line”?You have no idea what you’re talking about.
You are a nauseating elitist trying to sound like he cares about anyone but himself.
I recall your posts here about the “European”way of “dining” and how they know about enjoying life.
Truth be told,I have no love for the super rich,but I don’t hate them either.
I don’t envy someone who has more than they know what to do with.
The reason I can’t stand people like you is that you want to stick your damn nose in where it doesn’t belong.My anger at the left is about social engineering-political correctness,lionizing illegal aliens as some kind of noble souls,gun control aimed at making us docile lemmings,the “fairness” doctrine.
My anger isn’t about taxes or health care.I don’t expect the government to provide services withhout kicking in what I owe.I just don’t want it wasted on nonsense.
Frankly,I think there’s enough blame to go around between Dems and Republicans regarding the economy that neither side can claim the moral high ground.